THE BEARDED VULTURE. 



GipaHtus barb at us. Store. 



Although there exist numerous instances in which 

 the links that connect the larger groups of animals 

 cannot be distinguished, in the present state of our 

 knowledge, by the most acute zoologists, there are 

 many among these links too obvious to have escaped 

 even the most superficial observation. Thus the bird 

 which we are now about to describe was recognised, 

 even in the earliest times, as forming the passage be- 

 tween the Vultures and the Eagles, with each of which it 

 has since been by turns arranged. Aristotle and ^Elian, 

 who mention it under the name of Phene, and Pliny, 

 who converts this designation into that of Ossifraga, 

 (in which he is followed by Aldrovandus and other 

 writers of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries), refer 



BIRDS. X 



